Nearly 1,000 Miss. jobs lost due to tornadoes

Hundreds of jobs are temporarily gone, dozens of businesses destroyed or damaged in the hardest-hit areas, including Winston, Lee and Rankin counties

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A mobile home was snatched from the ground and its tattered remains strewn like confetti across Highlands mobile home park in Pearl by a powerful tornado that ripped through the area on April 28.(Photo: Joe Ellis/The Clarion-Ledger)Buy Photo

The severe thunderstorms that battered Mississippi last week gashed the state's economic base as unequivocally as it did houses, vehicles and trees, in the form of hundreds of jobs at least temporarily gone along with dozens of businesses destroyed or heavily damaged statewide.

Gerald Mills estimates an EF-4 tornado that caused most of the storm's deaths stripped Winston County of 500 jobs, at least temporarily.

A lot of those were in Louisville's industrial complex. Teters Floral Products operated a warehouse that employed 100 people, and was severely damaged. Saving those jobs is a priority for Mills, executive director of the Winston County Economic Development District Partnership. Teters' parent company said in a statement on its website that it is still evaluating the extent of the damage.

Making sure scheduled jobs still arrive is another of Mills' priorities. Starting in June, Natron Wood Products was set to employ 200 people making plywood panels in the old Georgia Pacific facility.

The 265,000 square-foot facility was heavily damaged. "But they've already promised to build back," Mills said. About 70,000 square feet of the building, which was has been reduced to a slab and will house the mobile hospital that will temporarily replace the destroyed Winston Medical Center.

The 600,000 square-foot building in which East Mississippi Community College performed workforce training absorbed heavy damage, too. The same goes for injection molding maker Hewlett Manufacturers, which employs 80 people.

"And we lost 39 chicken houses out in the county," Mills said. "I've been doing economic development for 30 years, and nothing has prepared me for this."

In Tupelo, 22 businesses on Gloster and Green streets, one of the city's business centers, were destroyed, with another 36 in that area suffering major damage, says Karen Geddie, vice president of the Tupelo-Lee County Community Development Foundation and Chamber of Commerce. Power was knocked out at the Mall at Barnes Crossing for four days, although the mall has reopened after eight miles' worth of power lines were restored. The mall itself wasn't severely damaged.

An exact number of lost jobs hasn't been determined, but Mayor Jason Shelton says the tally will "certainly be in the hundreds."

He added, "The economic impact is beyond that. People essentially stopped coming to Tupelo for days." Shelton said the city's businesses that took the brunt of the storm are slowly returning to normalcy and are open for business.

Still, the damage incurred to businesses in the three hardest-hit counties - Winston, Lee and Rankin - likely will resonate in future monthly unemployment rates in those counties. As has been the case after other major statewide weather events in recent years, the jobless rates in those counties likely will see a short-term increase due to the lost jobs and then a comparable upward trend as contractors and others start the rebuilding process, says Bob Neal, senior economist with the state Institutions of Higher Learning.

"A lot of it depends on how quick the recovery starts, how robust it is. There are a lot of 'what ifs,' " he said. Those variables include whether developers want to build anew on land where another business once stood, how quickly the most affected areas can settle insurance claims and utilize state and federal relief money to help businesses and whether the self-employed affected by the storms have the means to start over.

For March, the most recent month for which figures were available, the unemployment rate in Rankin County was 4.1 percent, the lowest rate in the state, according to the Mississippi Department of Employment Security. Lee County tallied 7.8 percent that month, and Winston County's rate was 11.2 percent.

MDES says those left jobless by the storms can seek unemployment insurance benefits through the agency's website, mdes.ms.gov, or at its WIN Job Centers, all of which are open and escaped major damage, according to agency spokeswoman Kathryn Stokes.

The Small Business Administration is offering disaster loans of up to $2 million apiece for businesses and private non-profits that suffered damage in Winston, Lee, Rankin, Madison, Itawamba, Lowndes and Wayne counties. Application filing deadline for physical property damage is June 30. Economic-injury applications are due by January 30.

The immediate outlook was better in Richland, where an EF-3 tornado caused one fatality. The twister tore through the industrial part of town.

"But most everybody is still using their people right now to go through inventory and size up the damage," Mayor Mark Scarborough said. Scarborough said 30 businesses incurred varying degrees of damage; some were destroyed.

Those whose function was to warehouse goods managed to find space nearby in Pearl, Brandon and Flowood. "Hopefully, all those will be back in Richland in the next 12 to 18 months," Scarborough said. "There's no doubt in my mind that every building that was damaged or destroyed will be ready for another tenant. We're not out of the hole yet, but we will be."

Contact Jeff Ayres at (601) 961-7050 or jeff.ayres@jackson.gannett.com. Follow him at @jeffayres71 on Twitter. Contact Clay Chandler at (601) 961-7264 or cchandler@jackson.gannett.com. Follow him at @claychand on Twitter.

Estimated job losses in the three areas hardest hit by the April 28 tornadoes. Latest unemployment rate in parentheses.

Winston County: 500 (11.2 percent)

Lee County: Several hundred (7.8 percent)

Rankin County: None reported, based on businesses using staff to secure and move inventory (4.1 percent)